The present invention relates generally to apparatuses for producing an operational manual of a certain machine which teaches how to operate the machine, and more particularly to an apparatus for producing an operational manual appropriate to the level of skill of an operator of the machine, such as an office automation (abbreviated OA hereinafter) machine, a communication machine, or the like.
As a result of the great advances made in the development of OA machines and communication machines, such machines has become more and more complicated and thus difficult to use and the operational manuals thereof have become very large volumes. Thus, the operator cannot quickly find a how to operate a particular process or procedure in an operational manual. Accordingly, an apparatus having a so-called help function has been developed. The help function helps the operator by displaying help information items, each of which teaches how to operate a particular process or procedure, on a display screen when he/she pushes a help key. A predetermined process requested by the operator generally comprises a plurality of minimum procedures which can no longer be segmented, and the conventional help information item is prepared for every process and/or for every given combination of the minimum procedures. Incidentally, the help information is stored in a memory of the apparatus. Thus, since the kinds of the help information items are limited and the levels thereof are uniform, the help information items cannot always provide appropriate answers to the variety of questions with operators having various levels of skill.
Due to the above problem, various types of help functions for supplying an operator with the desired help information item by taking into account his/her experience and/or the content of the operation have been developed as described below:
Firstly, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 61-243518 discloses a help guide system in which help information items have been prepared for various kinds of combinations of the minimum procedures and automatically selected by analyzing data input and/or output by the operator, and in which the operator further selects the desired help information item from among the preselected help information items. If the operator cannot find the desired help information item, he/she can increase the number of the help information items to be selected. Since the number of the help information items indicated on the screen is limited, he/she can easily and quickly find the desired help information item.
Secondly, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 62-262120 discloses an operation guidance learning device in which help information items have been prepared for various kinds of combinations of the minimum procedures and the number thereof is limited by automatically removing the help information item pertaining to a particular operation which the same operator and/or operators belonging to the same group repeat more than a predetermined number of times. Alternatively, the help information items may be removed by an operator's command.
Thirdly, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 63-66623 discloses an intellectual operation backup system in which the optimal number of help information items is automatically limited by analyzing the operator's identification and experience, the machine's identification, and the like. Even in this reference, help information items have been prepared for various kinds of combinations of the minimum procedures.
Fourthly, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 1-280821 discloses a guide help system in which, by analyzing procedures which have already been performed by an operator, a series of subsequent procedures of a process is automatically produced and indicated on a screen, when the operator pushes the help key.
However, the above help functions disclosed in the references No. 61-243518, No. 61-262120, No. 63-66623 and No. 1-280821 are respectively disadvantageous.
As to the help functions disclosed by the references No. 61-243518, No. 61-262120 and No. 63-66623, since the number of the help information items prepared for various combinations of the minimum procedures is limited by the storage capacity of the memory, these help information items cannot always satisfy the operator. On the other hand, if the storage capacity of the memory is increased, the help function may handle more requests of the operator, but the cost of the apparatus will be increased. In addition, even the help function in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 1-280821 cannot satisfy all the various types of requests of the operator since the patterns of the series of subsequent procedures are preselected. And, as with the other three references, if the number of the patterns is increased, the storage capacity of the memory will also be increased and the machine having such a memory will become more expensive.
Furthermore, since each of the above conventional help functions operates as an auxiliary operational manual and the operator is required to acquire a certain degree of knowledge on how to use the apparatus by carefully reading the operational manual, they are unsuitable for a beginner.